“This visually refined spectacle”: so a press handout from the Peacock Theatre describes Jump, the Korean knockabout show that has returned to Portugal Street. Beyond wondering how the management would describe a monsoon (“spits and spots of rain” in the weather-forecast cliché?), I record that the event is boisterously the same as before in its combative view of family life; that your young will adore the incessant fighting, the near-misses with lethal objects, the general air of mayhem, and the deafening sound-track; and that no one seemingly gets hurt. And that several members of the cast walk up walls by means of running jumps. I remember, as an innocent lad, being taught a crudely merry verse that began “Home presents a dismal picture, All is silent as the tomb...”. This poetic gem came to mind as I watched the antics of the vastly energetic Korean acrobats who make up this troupe.

Their family home is more trampoline than residence and behaviour is gymnastic rather than domestic. Why sit when you can jump on someone? Why extend a hand if it is not burdened with something to throw? Why not take Tom and Jerry as models? The first part of the evening (which is the more tedious and limited in its joking effects) feeds on bellicose gesture, hitting, tripping up, springing in the air, falling over but just missing other people. “How unlike,” as the Victorian matron observed about some foreign shenanigans, “the home-life of our own dear Queen!”